The Joke
The Joke at the Origin of Culture
Hegel remarked somewhere that all historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. Marx, following Hegel, added: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Freud, after Marx and Hegel, added another twist to this conceit: historic facts and personages appear twice, yes, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, quite true, BUT, to interpolate the title of a record of Branford Marsalis, they appear to us twice the first time, which is also to say, in other words, they that make their first appearance the second time. It is the farcical second impression that gives the first impression its tragic air and, more profoundly still, our tragic first impression doesn’t make a conscious impression on us until we’ve had a farcical second impression. Freud referred to this twist with the term “nachträglichkeit”, which has been translated into French as “après-coup” and into English as “deferred action”, “retroaction”, “belatedness” and “afterwardsness”.
My own peculiar twist on this matter is my claim that, insofar as our symbolic capacities account for the fact that there are such things as “historic facts and personages”, the first thing that our symbolic capacities did for us, before they could do anything else, was enable us to make farcical second impressions. In other words, I would like to propose that the first symbolic acts were acts of making fun or, in other words, the first symbolic acts were jokes.
I can hear the narrow minded amongst my readers recoiling at this proposition, “Preposterous! Jokes are idle matters and there is no way that symbolic capacities, which are of great expense to the organism, could have had idle beginnings.” I could point to many useless but expensive organs in the animal kingdom to refute your argument but, to make a more profound point, I will instead point out that you are mistaken, dear reader, if you believe that jokes are all play and no work. If we take for granted Spinoza’s proposition that sadness generates no knowledge or skills, it follows that we learn nothing from tragic events unless we are able to laugh at them after the fact. Those of you who have trained dogs know all too well that it is positive reinforcement that enables dogs to learn new behaviors and skills: negative reinforcement only keeps dogs from engaging in behaviors and exercising skills that they have already learned. The symbolic capacities that Homo sapiens possess enable them to make fun of pains, sadnesses, and sufferings after the fact and, as a result, Homo sapiens can learn new behaviors and skills by reliving and laughing at memories of pains, sadnesses, and sufferings. A joke is a playful matter, yes, but an exuberant joke is a playful matter that can make pain, sadness, and suffering work for us instead of against us. The exuberant joke is, of course, to be contrasted with the mean joke that re-doubles our pains, sadnesses, and sufferings and doesn’t enable us to learn anything. One might say that the mean joke is to the exuberant joke what cancerous cell growth is to “healthy” cell growth.
Now, my “farcical theory” of the origins of culture serves to explain both the masochistic streak prevalent in our species and the notions of the afterlife that are characteristic of human cultures. With regard to our masochism, Homo sapiens will put themselves through pain, sadness, and suffering that yields no immediate pleasure because they can anticipate the mediated pleasure that will come from making fun of pain, sadness, and suffering after the fact. With regard to the afterlife, our notion of the afterlife is the notion that we might make fun of death, the most terminal and terrifying of all our pains, sadnesses, and sufferings, after the fact.
I know that the prevailing theory is that symbolic capacities were, first and foremost, a means to resolve conflicts over sexual relations, but I don’t buy this theory. For me, resolving sexual conflicts was a secondary outcome of the development of symbolic capacities. First came the ability to learn new behaviors and skills by reliving and laughing at memories of pains, sadnesses, and sufferings; then came the conventional sexual behaviors that we learned through making fun of our sexual frustrations. In other words, the exuberant sex comedy precedes, exceeds, and succeeds any and all sexual conventions.
The Sacred and the Profane
Not only does my “farcical theory” of the origins of culture account for masochism and notions of the afterlife, it also accounts for the “sacred and profane” distinction that prevails in human cultures. You see, there are some pains, sadnesses, and sufferings that we are told not to make fun of because, we are told, there is nothing that anyone has ever learned by making fun of them: these pains, sadnesses, and sufferings are those that we hold sacred. Everything else is profane and, thus, can be made fun of.
Insofar as there is something to learn from every pain, sadness, and suffering that one can exuberantly joke about, there is nothing that is truly sacred. Each and every thing that is purported to be sacred is, rather, a pain, sadness, or suffering that has been meanly joked about to disastrous effect. We hold something sacred in order to ward off further mean jokes about it: for a pain, sadness, or suffering re-doubles, again and again, with every mean joke told about it, hardening that pain, sadness, or suffering against the softening power of exuberant jokes.
The individuals who have been victimized most by mean humor may develop an antipathy towards jokes in general, and they may endeavor to maximize the realm of the sacred and minimize the realm of the profane. They learn less from pains, sadnesses, and sufferings as a result, but they also protect themselves from mean humor and redoubled pains, sadnesses, and sufferings. Let us call these individuals ascetics.
The individuals who have been liberated most by exuberant humor may develop an affinity towards jokes in general, and they will endeavor to maximize the realm of the profane and minimize the realm of the sacred. They expose themselves to mean humor and redoubled pains, sadnesses, and sufferings as a result, but they also learn more from their pains, sadnesses, and sufferings. Let us call these individuals hedonists.
Others are neither ascetics nor hedonists but, rather, are ego-centrics. Ego-centrics only hold those things sacred that they themselves, or those whom they identify with, have persistently endured mean jokes about: they are otherwise fine with the profanation of everything and anything, and they often take pleasure at telling mean jokes at the expense of others.
In addition to ascetics, hedonists, and egocentrics, there are also magnanimous individuals who endeavor, above all else, to cultivate exuberant humor and counteract mean humor. To this end, the magnanimous neither privilege the sacred nor the profane but, rather, aim to balance relations between the two so as to ward off both asceticism and hedonism and to cultivate exuberant humor. For the magnanimous, nothing is absolutely sacred and nothing is absolutely profane: they hold that relative distribution of the sacred and the profane must vary according to the vagaries and whims of affect so as to nurture exuberant humor.
Most individuals are neither purely ascetic, nor purely hedonistic, nor purely egocentric, nor purely magnanimous. Most individuals are dividuated amongst all four of these types, which is to say, in other words, that most individuals vacillate between all four of the aforementioned types. That being said, however, most individuals would be predominantly egocentric if one were to measure the statistical distribution of their dividuations or vacillations. That being said, however, it matters less whether an individual is predominantly ego-centric and it matters more when and where an individual acts ego-centrically rather than ascetically, hedonistically, or magnanimously.
Speaking statistically, which is to speak ego-centrically, individuals who are predominantly ascetic, predominantly hedonistic, and predominantly magnanimous are always outliers. That being said, however, it matters little whether they are outliers and it matters more when and where these outliers are able to make prominent positions for themselves in a given society. The prominent positions that outliers make for themself in given times and places account for a given society's characteristic rituals or lack thereof:
Societies in which ascetic outliers are able to make prominent positions for themselves are societies in which austere and solemn rituals prevail. Peter Brook would call this a society nourished by “Holy Theatre”.
Societies in which hedonistic outliers are able to make prominent positions for themselves are societies in which carnivalesque and grotesque rituals prevail. Peter Brook would call this a society nourished by “Rough Theatre”.
Societies in which magnanimous outliers are able to make prominent positions for themselves are societies whose prevailing rituals are about the play of the austere and solemn, on the one hand, and the carnivalesque and the grotesque, on the other. Peter Brook would call this a society nourished by “Immediate Theatre”.
Societies in which ego-centric majorities overwhelm ascetic, hedonistic, magnanimous outliers, are societies in which ego-centrics hold the vast majority of prominent positions and, thus, societies in which all rituals are ruined, no matter whether they are austere and solemn or carnivalesque and grotesque. In ego-centric societies, mean measures and routines prevail. Peter Brook would call this a society poisoned by “Dead(ly) Theatre”.
Contemporary American society is, of course, an egocentric society, a society of mean measures and routines, poisoned by “Dead(ly) Theatre”. Our leader, Donald Trump, is nothing if he is not the poster child of ego-centric behavior. That being said, however, in response to the virulent ego-centrism of Trump and his supporters on the right, a new asceticism is gaining ground on the left: the asceticism that has come to be associated with the “trigger warning”, the “safe space”, and the “cancel culture”. Indeed, perhaps contemporary American society is on the verge of a major culture shift. Perhaps this new asceticism on the left will make a prominent position for itself and, as a result, new austere and solemn rituals of contrition will prevail: rituals of contrition for the genocide of Indiginous American peoples, contrition for the enslavement and oppression of African peoples and their descendants, contrition for the maltreatment of “non-white” immigrants to the United Strates, contrition for turning a blind eye and a cold shoulder to Jewish peoples fleeing genocide in Europe, contrition for dropping of the Atomic Bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contrition for the exploitation and subversion of the nations of the Global South, contrition for the promotion of the reckless production practices and consumption habits that have precipitated the “Great Thinning” and the “Sixth Extinction”, contrition for the celebration of misogyny and rape in American arts and letters, and contrition for so many other horrific pains, sadnesses, and sufferings that have been perpetrated or promoted by the Western European settler colonialists of the North American continent and their descendents.
Mean jokes about the horrific pains, sadnesses, and sufferings mentioned above are, of course, unconscionable: the telling of such mean jokes only re-doubles these most horrible of horrors. However, the magnanimous amongst us must argue that holding these pains, sadnesses, and sufferings absolutely sacred means that we learn nothing from them. Is it not imperative that we learn from these pains, sadnesses, and sufferings? Shouldn’t we learn to tell exuberant jokes that make fun of these horrific pains, sadnesses, and sufferings so that we may learn from them?
Ay, but if we say that the answer to the questions above is a resounding affirmative, “Yes!”, mustn’t we then ask how it is that we might learn to tell exuberant jokes about horrific pains, sadnesses, and sufferings? This, of course, is the question that I shall endeavor to answer.
Culture at the Origin of the Joke
In his 1976-1977 lecture series at the College de France, titled How to Live Together, Roland Barthes remarks upon the distinction between method (e.g., our modern “scientific method”) and culture (e.g., the “paideia” of the ancient Greeks). Method, Barthes writes, is a “manner of proceeding toward a goal, a protocol of operations with a view to achieving an end; for example: a method for decoding, explaining, describing exhaustively.” Method “renounces what [we] don’t know of [ourselves], our irreducibility, our force (to say nothing of our unconscious).” Culture, by contrast, is “a training that brings the whole unconscious of the thinker into play”.
I take it for granted that there is no method for telling exuberant jokes. Learning to tell exuberant jokes about horrific pains, sadnesses, and sufferings is, for me, a matter of enculturation rather than a matter method. Quoting Barthes again, to search for a method is “to fetishize the goal as a privileged place, to the detriment of other possible places.” Enculturation, by contrast, involves wandering around “eccentric paths of possibility” and “stumbling among blocks of knowledge”, “not finding a path, [but] presenting our findings as we go along.” To put it in terms that I prefer, enculturation is a matter of loving to play, whereas method is a matter of playing to win.
The ascetic individual and the ego-centric individual, both of whom lack exuberant humor, are methodical types who play to win. By contrast, the hedonistic individual and the magnanimous individual, both of whom abound with exuberant humor, are cultured types who love to play. Method is valued above culture wherever ascetics and ego-centrics achieve prominence; culture is valued above method wherever hedonists and the magnanimous achieve prominence.
We must put method under erasure (sous rature) in order to gain insight into culture if we are to learn to tell exuberant jokes. Again, recall that the exuberant sex comedy precedes, exceeds, and succeeds any and all sexual conventions, and try to understand that the exuberant sex comedy is a cultural matter and that sexual conventions are a matter of method. You place method under erasure and you gain insight into culture when you deconstruct a given sexual convention, instead of taking that sexual convention for granted, and you reconstruct the sex comedy that precedes, exceeds, and succeeds a given sexual convention.
Ay, and the following point cannot be stressed enough: to gain insight into a society’s culture means getting in on a society’s jokes; it does not mean knowing how to follow that society’s conventions. In fact, you can know how to follow each and every one of a society’s conventions without possessing a shred of insight into its culture. Indeed, an ability to follow conventions without insight is precisely what machine learning produces: artificial intelligence. A machine has yet to be built that has insight into a society’s culture, that laughs at and riffs off a society’s jokes, and this is to say, in other words, that a machine has yet to be built that displays natural intelligence. Natural intelligence, i.e., the wit that engenders culture and comedy, is that which precedes, succeeds, and exceeds artificial intelligence, i.e., the logic that engenders methods and conventions.
Today, many are concerned about the increasing power and prevalence of artificial intelligence. This is because we live in ego-centric societies which value method and devalue culture, and we are concerned that machines will eventually be valued over most of us because machines will be better at following conventions than most of us are. Laughing at this logic, the magnanimous and hedonistic outliers amongst us muse that we ought to be more concerned with the fact that our societies value of method and devalue culture, for this is the disease, and we ought to be less concerned with the increasing power and prevalence of artificial intelligence, for this is but one of many symptoms of the disease.